It was with a heavy heart that I entered Pickwicks bar late one night on Cape Town’s bustling Long Street. I had spent seven long months scouring South Africa for musicians, searching for the future subjects of my documentary. Yet night after night, open mic after open mic, I was unable to find the perfect fit. Meanwhile, I received a proper “welcome” to South Africa’s dark underside; I had been robbed twice, received a death threat, narrowly missed getting hit by bb gun bullets and had the wheel from my rental car stolen while it was parked outside of a new friend’s home. I was in Cape Town on a Fulbright scholarship, working in the same township where previous Fulbright student Amy Biehl had been killed by a mob in 1994. Murder rates in the western cape had since increased. As I found the last seat at yet another open mic, I resigned myself to a night of sober, solo listening.

I’m not sure what it was about me that caught Nahum’s eye. From my frazzled appearance to begrudging-the-world posture, I can’t say I was the most approachable person in the room. All I know is that a bright-eyed, emaciated-looking South African walked straight up to me and said, “Hello. What is your name?” Without any seats left in the house, I tried to make room for him on the bench next to me. As he squirmed easily into the narrow space, he wasted no time in informing me that he was looking for a job and a place to live. I mentally winced as I remembered the last homeless guy that I tried to help. That situation had led to the above-mentioned death threat: a drunken tirade promising to “bring violence” on my “American home.”

Yet as I sat with Nahum throughout the remainder of the night, I listened to his story. He was an MC from the Eastern Cape who had recently moved to Cape Town to earn some money for his fiance and the baby they were expecting in another four months. Unable to find work in the township he grew up in, Nahum moved to Cape Town (where South Africa’s rich and fashionable come to parade and sunbathe and, inadvertently, create jobs). But like so many other young people in a country with roughly 40% unemployed citizens, Nahum had no luck in his search. I was surprised when I asked Nahum what type of work he would like to do, and he responded, “Producing film and music. I am a producer and a creator.” Resolved to ignore the nagging voice in my head that told me Nahum could be another thief or worse, I told him the truth. “I’m making a documentary on South African music.” Then, before I could stop myself, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

The next day Nahum was helping me navigate the Cape Flats — one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods — to pick up a musician for a shoot. We had met at the same cafe, Nahum holding a copy of his passport which I had asked him to bring “for insurance purposes.” The truth was that I wanted his ID in case he stole my camera. He silently complied, not asking any questions.

Nahum at work

When we got to the musician’s gig, I taught Nahum how to zoom and focus my Sony EX3 – a camera that I had flown back to the U.S. to purchase (which was more affordable than simply buying it in South Africa). It was also the biggest investment I had made in my life. A few weeks earlier, I had been filming in the middle of the day inside a band’s studio when a man broke down the door (not so hard to do since the studio was a shack made of corrugated metal). He charged me with bloodshot eyes, reaching for the camera as the band held him back. He didn’t get the camera, but I got one hell of a shot. It didn’t make it into the documentary, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Having had the camera nearly stolen a few weeks earlier, I watched Nahum like a hawk. I was soon impressed with his slow and gentle approach. It wasn’t long before Nahum was accompanying me to all of my shoots. When gangsters would stroll by with their eyes on the camera, he would stand between us and tell me what they had been hissing (“Get it from the white girl!”).

Nahum won my trust when we packed up a shoot in a particularly dangerous area of the Flats. He told me that his friend lived nearby, and offered to take me there for dinner. Cautiously, I said yes; he proceeded to direct me deeper and deeper into the Flats. We parked on an avenue I had never been to before, and I locked my car about nine times before walking to the door of a small house. Nahum knocked as I surveyed the area, mentally registering the fastest escape route.

The door opened, and I was ushered into a loudest, brightest, friendliest room you can imagine. Children ran in and out as women worked in every corner of the small kitchen with babies strapped to their backs. Nahum quickly made off with the men and I was given the task of chopping meat. I shyly offered to chop vegetables instead; “I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t—”

“Yebo, Nahum is a vegan!” the women informed me, pushing me towards a cutting board with vegetables piled on top.

That evening, I dined with the friendliest people I had met in South Africa. The children climbed all over me, the teenagers asked what celebrities I had met, and the adults told me about African Hebrews — the group some had joined as teenagers that influenced their decisions to become vegans. Nahum explained that the group had prepared him and his friends to adopt healthy and independent lifestyles, unlike many who ate the fried meat and dough ubiquitous in the townships. Eventually he left the group, preferring, as he put it, “the messiah within.” He had remained a vegan ever since.

It’s one thing to be a vegan in the middle of Portland. Another thing completely in the middle of a barren township in South Africa. Impressed by the first homeless vegan I had ever met, I began to chat more with Nahum on our daily drives to and from the townships. He told me that life without a home was exhausting, and that he would be alright if he simply had a place — any place — to lay his head down at night.

I asked my English South African housemate whether Nahum could surf our couch for a week or so. His immediate response: “No.” It didn’t surprise me. Though many young white South Africans I met recoiled at the word “racist,” they also recoiled at any suggestion of interracial living. Gumtree, South Africa’s version of Craigslist, was littered with apartments posted for “whites only please.” “No disrespect.” Many people had suffered multiple robberies or car-jackings and used these incidents as evidence against any real-life manifestation of South Africa’s famed “Rainbow Nation.” Though no one would say it out loud, it was clear that some white South Africans felt that black people had their place: in the townships.

Nahum did not want his first born to grow up in a township. For one, the murder rate is devastating. Even after apartheid ended in 1994, the number of murders in South Africa exceeded the number of American soldiers’ deaths in Vietnam – by four times. The rate of violence against women is among the highest in the world. And the schools are falling apart, attended infrequently and often taught by untrained and undereducated teachers.

Nahum wanted more, and I could not blame him. He had been through more than those of us who live in the world’s wealthier nations could imagine. So when my housemate left on a month-long business trip, I took a chance. Against my housemate’s wishes, I invited Nahum to come stay in the empty bedroom. Nahum accepted, but would not sleep in the bedroom of someone who did not want him there. “Bad vibes,” he said. He slept on the couch.

By this point, I knew Nahum well enough to be sure he wouldn’t pillage the place. What I couldn’t have expected was the supreme peace that he brought into our home. He taught me how to bake delicious vegan pizza. I helped him write a cover letter for his college application. He laughed when my wet clothes were stolen from the community washing machine and taught me how to wash clothes “the African way” — in the bathtub.

“Become the owner of the land we occupy!!”

Living with Nahum prepared me for my ultimate test as a new South African. One day I returned home to find that the external hard drive containing my documentary footage was missing. Days, weeks, months, hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars worth of footage, gone. Six months earlier I might have broken down and asked Nahum to leave. As it was, I muffled my gut reaction. I asked Nahum if he had seen the drive. He said no. I asked the friends who had been in my room. They all said no. I locked my remaining hard drive in my closet (I had backed up half of the footage, but only half) and went out again with Nahum the next day to start shooting all over again.

I continued to live and shoot with Nahum for about two weeks before I found out what had happened. I had racked my brain over whether to trust Nahum, and racked Nahum’s brain over whether we could trust our maid — a woman who my former housemate had hired to clean the house once a week. Nahum refused to overthink it. He didn’t pass judgement or expend breath defending himself. He just said that he didn’t know. He didn’t show any shock or indignation over the loss. He wasn’t unsympathetic, but his silence reflected a reality I might have otherwise overlooked. The loss of a hard drive full of documentary footage is nothing compared to real loss; the type of loss that is a fact of everyday existence for South Africans who have lost their homes, families, communities and traditions.

The next week my housemate’s maid did not come to work, but the following week she showed up. Nahum and I were out on a shoot when I received a text message from her. “I found R900 under the speaker,” she wrote. “I will place it on your desk.”

“Thank you” I wrote back. I didn’t need to ask any questions. I had not left any money under the speaker, and neither had Nahum. She certainly hadn’t placed the money there as a gift — it was more than the amount my housemate paid her each month. The R900 amounted to slightly over $100 – about the amount one might receive for a used hard drive sold on the street.

She continued to stop by each week, and I told her that it didn’t feel right for her, a young mother, to clean up after me. She said that she needed the money, and we agreed that she would stop by each week and have lunch with me instead. She continued to clean the house afterwards — she said she didn’t want to accept money for nothing — but the dynamic of our relationship changed. I learned that she was a religious woman and that her son had recently been so sick she had to take him on an expensive trip to the hospital. Luckily, she “found” the money and he lived through the incident. She continued to express interest in whether I was able to re-shoot the scenes I needed for my documentary.

I’ll never know what exactly happened to that hard drive, but now it is the least of my concerns. I could make the choice to mistrust my fellow people, like so many have done during apartheid and afterwards, or I could invest my trust in a new future for all.

No one could have made this more clear to me than Nahum, the producer of The Creators. After we finished the documentary, he moved into a new home with his fiancé and their four-month-old daughter. No longer homeless or jobless, he is working professionally as a producer in the South African film industry. His daughter will grow up in a new world, with the best of guides.

Faith47’s Fragments of a Burnt History, showing at David Krut Projects Parkwood from 8 November 2012 until 9 February 2013, is comprised of an installation of found objects and artwork created in the artist’s studio, as well as a new series of monotypes produced in collaboration with the David Krut Print Workshop.

Rowan Pybus, one of the talented cinematographers who shot The Creators, released these photos as well as a video of the exhibition. Starting in a forgotten and dusty letterpress studio and moving through the installation, the short gives the viewer a deeper understanding of this new body of work.

“[Faith47’s] sensitivity to the environments through which she moves (and to which her gallery audience most often does not have access) allows her to present observations and critiques of the realities of existence on the streets without sensationalising the very real positions of the anonymous characters that emerge in her work. Fragments of a Burnt History presents many elements of living in South Africa thatcarry with them long lists of weighty connotations – of establishment, security, spirituality and the fragility of political and ideological devices of control, often disconnected from the people they are designed to govern – the people on the streets. The installation of work communicates the emotion that Faith47 experiences in the streets, which tell her ‘a real, hard and beautifully sad story.’ The nostalgic architecture of the city is present in the work, and the sense that the ‘history of the city is etched deep into its streets’ – the works are fragments of this history, containing signs of the dynamic transition that has been, at times, reeling and painful, but has also been honest, allowing itself to be offered up for comment and consumption. The voices of the people that occupy this symbolic South African city, incorporated into Faith47’s own voice, allow her work to function as a penetrative look into the psyche of the spaces that we communally inherit.”- Jacqueline Nurse, September 2012

The BBC chooses to spell Mthetho Mapoyi’s last name with an “h” – it’s not entirely arbitrary, as it’s a mistake made by those who processed Mthetho’s passport years ago. He’s filed for a change, but he’s not holding his breath – in the meantime, surely the passport is more reliable than Mthetho himself, right, BBC?

Tedx Teen took their artistic license a little bit further, with “Mteto Maphoyi.”

Not to be outdone, The New York Times added their own twist on his name: “Mthetho Mayobi” – it has a nice ring to it, no?

Unfortunately our western media’s clumsy fingers make Mthetho fairly difficult to track down – hence a good number of kind-hearted philanthropists can’t find him (Google “Mthetho Mapoyi” and you get over 500 results – Google “Mthetho Mayobi” and you’re left with nothing but the Times). Many reach out to us here at The Creators documentary, and many more undoubtedly give up. Hopefully this post will help steer future Googlers in the right direction.

[Yes, journalists, we will connect you with Mthetho, but you have to promise to do three things in return: 1) spell his name correctly, 2) pay him adequately for his time and 3) include his contact details in your piece. As wonderful as it is for Mthetho to feature in an oversized ad sponsored by Belvedere Vodka, it’s a lot more wonderful for him to have food on the table and a roof over his head.]

While statistics like these can be daunting, we need not throw our hands up in despair. Complicated policy arguments can distract us from a basic solution that the majority in every country favors, but neither South Africa nor the United States invests enough money, political pull or airtime in: education. Anyone who doubts that basic education is dysfunctional South Africa need only pick up a copy of Catherine Besteman’s Transforming Cape Town:

“Of fifteen secondary schools in Khayelitsha in the year 2001, only forty-three learners from a matric group of nine thousand attempted maths as a requirement for university entrance. Forty-three out of nine thousand. Only six people in the whole of the Western Cape — I’m talking about African language speakers — managed to get above 60 percent for maths and science.”

– John Gilmour

But enough statistics. Here are some options for action.

For South Africans:

– Get involved with Heal the Hood (founded by The Creators‘ Emile Jansen)

-Donate to one of the charities recommended by The Life You Can Save. Measure the direct impact of your donation using their Impact Calculator, developed by producer/director of The Creators Laura Gamse.

For the faint-hearted (or shallow-pocketed):

-Donate your bike. The Abahlali Bikes Initiative repurposes old bicycles as pedicabs and donates the rest to Khayelitsha orphanages.

– Give The Creators DVD as a gift. 75% of net proceeds go to the artists featured in the documentary and the South African crew who made the film a reality.

– Check out what the one and only Vusi Mahasela (whose music was removed from the international release of The Creators, despite the artist’s own wishes, by Sony Music earlier this year) has to say about education in South Africa.

P.S. One last word on Die Antwoord. Their lyrics now fit in well with the global top 40, but hopefully their master plan involves infiltrating mainstream media in order to bring billions of rands back home and start schools all over South Africa. Let’s hope. In the meantime, check out Waddy Jones’ much more lyrically substantial, aurally stimulating and less financially successful former project, The Constructus Corporation (which he made along with Marcus Wormstorm of Sweat.X long before The Creators was a glint in our eye). Read the lyrics below if there’s any mystery why they’re not big on Gaga.

Lyrics:

I don’t know if you noticed, but your planet is uh, sorta like, pretty fucked up.
Now the severely chaotic vibration caused by the slaughter of innocent sentient beings has led to this current situation.
Now unless you’ve been blessed with the ability to manipulate your destiny, stick your head back in this hole.
Part of me is like, “Pardon me, sorry to disturb your little comfort zone,”
and the rest of me is like “WAKE THE FUCK UP FOR GOODNESS SAKES!”
Don’t let you children pay for your mistakes.
The human race cannot evolve so long as they consume flesh.
Question: does your world resemble heaven or hell?
The demon people have got you trapped in their voodoo spell
We weren’t designed to exist like this
It was created in the image of an almighty compassionate entity
So it looks like we’re gonna have to rearrange things a little
So we can experience this shit like it was meant to be.

Yoo-hoo?
Wakey-wakey!

How come I can’t fly or breath under water like I can in my dreams?
Or like, communicate with animals like Adam and Eve?
These and many other exciting questions will be answered
When the power hungry uglies controlling this realm get blasted
By their own reflection
Calm minds provide protection
Neglection of your health is the best way to get swayed
Manipulated by blood spells
You eat food containing fear that’s why you’re scared
And I’m prepared for the transition from Pieces to Aquarius

I’m on a mission, steady
Hitting pressure points with pinpoint precision
‘Til they take the carrots of their fuckin’ ears and listen

Yoo-hoo?!
Wakey-wakey!

I don’t really think anyone’s that different from me
We rock individually and connect invisibly
The Thunder cats on the track never skipping a beat
Fresh like an early morning skinny-dip in the sea.

“Do you hear that humming?
What are these strange tracks in the sand?
There’s something coming! Come on man, let’s get back in the van!”
Said Jim to his good friend Dr. Spock but when Spock disappeared Jim was like “What the fuck!”
He freaked out — whipped out his face and started looking around.
Little did he know that Spock was safe with us under the ground,
“Relax doctor this won’t hurt, please don’t panic!”
The beat started banging, and we began the reprogramming.
I told him not be nervous, we’d fucked with his head on purpose and sent him back to the surface with Jim
“*bah* Spock my heart!”
“Sorry captain.”
“Aw it’s fine man, what happened?”

Yoo-hoo?!
Wakey-wakey!

La-di-da-da-da
“Sir, um why do have those two carrots stuck in your ears?”
“Uhhh, I’m sorry I can’t hear you, I’ve got these two carrots stuck in my ears…”

I first heard about Mthetho Mapoyi through various rumors drifting about Cape Town. People spoke of an opera singer with a scar stretching the length of his face who owned only one CD, a Pavarotti album which he listened to repeatedly while growing up. Having only this music soundtracking his youth in the rural Xhosa township in South Africa’s Western Cape, Mthetho taught himself to sing along – not only in Italian, but with similar richness and timber to the original. Mthetho, whose first language is isiXhosa, never knew the direct translations of what he was singing, but felt the meaning through the music. I asked everyone I knew if they could connect me with Mthetho, but no one seemed to know him personally and I began to wonder whether he was just a myth or an exaggerated story. Finally someone told my cinematographer, Bernard Myburgh, that we would find Mthetho in the township outside of Hermanus, so we embarked on the drive from Cape Town with only a name (and the wrong one, at that): Nthatho. (Many more mistakes have been made since then with the spelling of Mthetho’s name: TedxTeen calls him “Mteto Maphoyi” and BBC calls him “Mthetho Maphoyi” — Mthetho is content with all of these spellings, though Google is less so).

Three hours later, we were in the middle of a township we had never heard of and we hopped out of the car. We got plenty of attention, being two white folks driving up in a big white van in the middle of a sea of shacks and Xhosa pedestrians. We started asking.

“Molo, molo, kunjani, do you know a man named Nthatho? An opera singer, a man with a scar down the side of his face?”

Our attempts at isiXhosa were graciously ignored and we received a mixture of smiles, thoughtful silences, and invitations to go to the bar. We kept asking, walking up and down the street, driving to the school, and finally making our way to the bar asking anyone along the way:

“Do you know Nthatho the opera singer? He has a big scar across his face? Alright, enkosi kakhulu.”

No luck. There is a special sort of feeling you get when entering a strange town, trying to speak a foreign language and looking for someone that no one has ever heard of – especially when you stick out like the bright white colonizers who initially segregated South Africa, relegating the Xhosa, San and other loosely-defined black people to 13% of the country’s land. 75% of the population shoved into 1/8 of South Africa. Even though homes that used to look like this:

…now look like this:

…we received only friendly responses as we roamed through the streets. Finally we met Buli, a woman who seemed to know what we were talking about. “An opera singer? Nthatho? You mean Mthetho – with the scar on his cheek, yes. He taught my cousin to sing.”

And we were set. Buli invited us to brai (bbq) with her family that night and we met her cousin and several other neighbors who began singing in their early teens with Mthetho. We spent the evening listening to the most unique and original opera music that had ever reached our ears. It turned out that Mthetho himself was back in Delft, a township outside of Cape Town (where we had come from). We met up with him as soon as we got back, and followed him around The Waterfront (the ritzy tourist area of town, once a beach, now a harbor mall owned by whites) as he sang for tips with his friends. Mthetho uses the money he earns busking to support himself and his brother:

Watch more from Mthetho in his home in Delft (before his shack burned down in late 2010) and visiting his home in Hermanus (where he can no longer live because authorities have banned singing on the streets). Mthetho (also known as Mteto Maphoyi and several other spellings depending on the translation from isiXhosa) recently moved to a township outside of Pretoria to sing with the Black Tie Ensemble. You can watch Mthetho’s full story as part of The Creators documentary.

Ongx is one of less than 5% of Khayelitsha residents that graduated from high school. He knows that roughly half of this year’s graduating high school class in Khayelitsha will fail their final exams (http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/glaring-inequality-in-city-schools-1.1089207) and that those who do pass will have an uphill battle fighting to pay for university fees. In Khayelitsha, unemployment estimates range from 40% to 70% (as opposed to 3% of white South Africans who report unemployment). Ongx has petitioned the Western Cape government to help to start a school in Khayelitsha, but his plea fell on deaf ears. So this week, together with his bandmate Wara Zintwana, Ongx is taking matters into his own hands.

With $548 donated by (two) generous Creators audience members, Ongx and Wara bought a school. It is small and empty at the moment, but they are turning it into the first and most prestigious music academy in the South Africa’s largest township. And they’re doing it by hand.